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April 17, 2011

G14: Red Sox 8, Blue Jays 1

Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Jacoby Ellsbury -- the #8 and #9 hitters in the order -- each drove in three runs, as Boston cruised to its second straight victory. After an 0-6 start, the Red Sox have gone 4-4.

Four straight hits in the second -- singles by Jed Lowrie, J.D. Drew, and Salty, and a three-run bomb to right field from Ellsbury (his 3rd homer of the season) -- quickly erased Toronto's lead and gave Lester (6-6-1-3-5, 110) a decent cushion to work with.

Salty's second single of the afternoon drove in two runs in the sixth. In addition to his hit in the second, Lowrie also reached base twice on errors. His line drive past first baseman Adam Lind in the eighth scored the Sox's final two runs; it was ruled a two-base error.

Baseball players are very delicate creatures..... And Carl Crawford is a 9th spot away from completely wilting....I am actulaly shocked Lowrie is playing , this has to be the end for Marco, I could see starting Jed against a lefty , but this is a sure sign he will be the SS. And if he goes 0-4 does he bench him. I am always amazed how mangers treat lower paid athletes. they use them more as pawns they can actually actulally move were high paid guys offer no flexibilty....

On Crawford being back in the lineup:"We talked for a little while. I just wanted to do a couple of things: reassure him how we feel, which I think is pretty obvious and find out if I can help, how can I help? I haven’t been around him for forever. He actually was really good. He said he feels good. If work has anything to do with it ... he almost beat us to the ballpark today. I thought a day yesterday of being in the cage and not having to take it right into the game sometimes can help. Once he gets going — I think we all know it, I know I do — he’s going to get real hot. Hope it starts today. This is certainly not a guy who when he doesn’t hit, you run from. He’s going to be a huge part of our offense."

On Lowrie hitting sixth:"We talked about that a little bit last night. Jed’s so hot right now, how do you keep him out of the lineup? Then the thinking was, he’s such a good righthand hitter, if we sandwich him in between the two lefties, maybe that takes away a potential opportunity for Toronto’s bullpen."

A bit ago Allan you were referencing the pitchfx thing to justify what at the time seemed like a horrible call on a bad pitch. What I meant to say then is I noticed that if the pitch is called a strike but is obviously out of the zone they just drag it back to the edge of the zone on pitchfx. If its a ball they leave it where it was. This is from a fair amount of empirical evidence.

baseball announcers always have a problem with verb tenses--they create a 'fantasy future' tense that somehow keeps the standard present in form but not in intent--you've put it in the actual future tense, but I always hear: a base hit now ties this game; if that ball gets past the catcher, a run scores

it is the same problem i have with "scoring position". yeah, the guy can score from there, but not always. i always think of a person who doesn't understand baseball very well hearing the game - and being confused when the run actually doesn't score on the single.

wasn't there a game in which dumbo could only go from 2nd to 3rd on a crazy fenway double?